Vengeance
by idioticonion
Summary: There's nothing like a little mystical interference to set the world to rights. Billy has to deal with time travel, a demon and an annoying superhero to try and win the girl.
1. Chapter 1

**Act 4**

**Everything you ever**

Billy's fingers twist through the rough red fabric and squeeze it before shoving the lab coat on to the floor. He collapses in front of his computer, staring disconsolately at the dull eye of the web cam. All the frantic, furious energy that's powered him through this last, crazy week drains out of him, leaving him feeling limp and lifeless.

(Just like her. Like his Penny.)

Covering his face with his hands, very quietly he says, "I want to take it back." He doesn't sob. He doesn't break down and cry or beat his hands dramatically against the keyboard. He just asks, even though he knows it's hopeless. He prays, even though he's certain there's no one out there to listen.

"Just take it back."

Problem is, when you make a deal with the devil, there are always consequences. Side effects, like from an experiment. You can't control all the variables. He couldn't control the environment, or predict the breakdown of the freeze ray.

Okay, maybe he could have foreseen the sheer, crashing stupidity of Captain Hammer. But that's just another mistake he tries so hard to forget.

"Please," he whispers. "Please, just take it back."

"And why would you want to do that, Billy-boy?" A voice says, smooth and rich as chocolate, making him jump. He lifts his head and sits upright, turning around to face the sliding door of his laboratory. There's a woman standing there. A tall and beautiful woman with large, almond eyes, wise and sad.

"Hourglass?" Billy greets her, one hand across his chest, massaging his skittering heart. "W-what are you doing here?"

"Answer the question, boy," she says as she approaches him. "Why would you want to give this up?" Her long, slender fingers sweep casually across her body, taking in the lab, the cramped kitchen and the meagre bedroom of his tiny studio apartment. "You got everything you ever wanted," she elaborates, pointing out the irony that's dogged him for weeks. "You're in the Evil League of Evil. If you want it, you now have access to unimaginable power and wealth, recognition. You even destroyed your nemesis."

"But the price…" Billy mutters. Then he cowers back as she looms over him, seeming to grow in size, to swell into black shadow..

"When you made that deal with him, you knew about the price." Hourglass says.

Billy looks up at her, blinking rapidly. How does she know? How does she know what he did?

"Didn't you know?" She repeats, needing his answer.

"I knew."

Hourglass smiles, holding up a hand. "Yet still you want to take it back? All this?"

He nods, his shoulders sagging.

"We all have a choice, Billy boy. Even you. If I send you back, you'll have to make it again. You know that?"

Billy smiles bitterly and draws himself up, an edge of Dr Horrible's steel in his voice. "You can turn back time as well as see the future? Isn't that a bit unfair?"

She shrugs. "You mean this is meant to be fair?"

Billy closes his eyes, tight-shut, and just before the whooshing noise roars in his ears he hears her speak, soft and certain. "Captain Hammer would have destroyed himself. All you had to do was wait."

And then there is nothing but burning, searing agony.

*--*--*

**Laundry Day**

Billy thought that he'd be sent back to before it had all happened; to before Captain Hammer and Penny had ever met. Instead, he comes to his senses sitting opposite her in the laundry mat, the sunlight streaming through the store-front window, illuminating her face, her titian hair.

He'd forgotten how beautiful she is.

She smiles, and there's a grace about her. She touches his knee and he feels the warmth spread through him. He wants to throw himself down at her feet and kiss them.

Instead, he blushes and looks down. He killed her once. This was the very last time he saw her alive; At least, alive without huge pieces of his death ray protruding from her chest.

"Keep your head up, Billy Buddy," Penny says, and it's exactly the same as it was the first time. His heart leaps with the same hope, the same possibility, before she dashes it all with her next words.

Captain Hammer is coming here, to their place, his safe space. Captain Hammer is coming to the laundry mat.

But weirdly, this time Billy doesn't flinch at the news, doesn't try to run. He's seen Hammer without his power, he's seen Hammer stripped down to the basics - shame and cowardice and near-collapse - and the hero doesn't scare him any more.

When Penny makes her stumbling introductions, where Hammer makes his lame jokes and blusters and postures, Billy just stands tall and stares him out until even Penny feels the tension and finds an excuse to leave the two of them alone.

"Why did you never kill me?" Billy asks, as the question pops into his head. There's no time for niceties or pretence. Hammer knows who he really is.

There's no time for masks.

Hammer laughs uncertainly. "So, Doctor Horrible, this is what you look like when you're not hiding behind all the… science-y stuff."

Billy smirks at that. "Science-y stuff? Really?" He can see what Hammer's trying to do, see him trying to wrestle control of the situation. Thing is, the chump's to stupid to engage him in a war of words. "Just answer the question, bonehead! All the times that you beat me unconscious, you never followed through. You never killed me. Why?" He's nose to nose with the man now, the man who killed the woman he loves. "Don't you realize how dangerous I am?"

Billy realizes then that it's something that's been torturing him since Penny's death. If Hammer had stopped him, really stopped him, before the opening of the Caring Hands Homeless Shelter, then Penny wouldn't have died. If Hammer had done his job, Penny wouldn't have died.

But "You- you're the bonehead!" is all Hammer says. "Walking around in your pretty white dress with your little goggles, playing with ray guns like you're a little kid."

"It's not a dress, it's a _lab coat_!" Billy tries to interject.

"Besides, it's fun. There's people who need saving and they love it when they see me beat you up!"

Billy shakes his head, incredulous. "This is just to flatter your vanity? You idiot! You-"

Penny looks over from the dryer and smiles at them, causing Hammer to grab him in a mock-friendly hug, to almost throttle him while he pours words of poison into Billy ear.

Now. This is the point where Billy swears to kill his nemesis. Right now.

Right now is where he wishes, with all his heart and soul, that he can show Hammer what it's like to feel this way, what it's like to lose something he loves and to have his power taken away.

Right now is where he condemns Penny to death.

And when Hammer and Penny walk out of the laundry mat together, there's a change in air pressure behind him and Billy doesn't have to turn around to know who's standing there.

"D'Hoffryn," he says, shoulders sagging. "Hey."

And the demon frowns in confusion as Billy hauls himself casually on to a wash tub and looks up at him. "I was expecting you."


	2. Chapter 2

**Act 5**

**A man's gotta do**

Billy has never blamed the vengeance demon for any of this. He understands that it was his own furious anger that attracted the creature and his own selfish pride that sealed their deal. He wonders if he'll have the strength to resist D'Hoffryn's offer this time. He wonders if he'll just try and weasel his way around it. "You have a proposal for me?" He says.

The demon stares at him intently, as if trying to work him out. "There has been mystical interference here," he harrumphs.

Billy shrugs. "Don't _you_ count as mystical interference?"

D'Hoffryn grins, showing his teeth, and raises one talon. "A fair point. But time travel? Could it be that we've already made a deal and you, William, did not like the outcome."

Billy rolls his eyes but inside he's stung. That he didn't like the outcome is an understatement. "You could say that."

"But surely you got what you wanted? Entry into your Evil League, the brave Captain humiliated?"

"Penny died."

D'Hoffryn's eye ridges shoot up. "Ah."

"Yeah. Ah."

"You knew there would be a price."

"Not one I'm willing to pay, dude."

D'Hoffryn nods. "You know, there is another way."

"I'm not making another wish." Billy watches the vengeance demon carefully as he paces around the dryer, his long robes trailing across the floor in his wake.

"You don't have to. At least, not for yourself. No, I always thought you have a great talent for vengeance. What you did with the Wonderflonium alone… A triumph! Join my family, William. I can offer you more power than your petty Evil League of Evil will ever have. And you want chaos? Why, the very essence of a vengeance demon is to bring chaos, and retribution to those who deserve it." He smiles. "Putting the power in different hands."

Billy feels the truth of D'Hoffryn's words. "Maybe," he says. "But I've had power. And all I really want is Penny."

"You can never have her," D'Hoffryn sneers with a dismissive wave of his claw.

"That's not what I've been told." Billy replies, although thinking back on it, Hourglass didn't specifically guarantee that he'd end up with Penny.

D'Hoffryn shrugs. "Well, at least I tried." And then he smiles. "You're sure about this?"

But all Billy remembers is the stench of burned flesh and the screaming and the blood that stained his lab coat red.

Her blood.

"I'm sure," he says firmly. He's sure. He'll give it all up for her. For Penny.

And in the next moment, the laundry mat is empty.

*--*--*

It's harder than he thought to keep secrets from Penny. Over the next couple of weeks in the run up to the opening of the homeless shelter, she knows there's something up with him.

"You don't like him do you?" She asks shrewdly, as they sit up on their twin washtubs and eat frozen yogurt. "Captain Hammer? You don't like him very much."

Billy smiles awkwardly. "W-what's not to like?" His eyes feel gritty and dry so he tries to blink the sensation away, a nervous habit he's not proud of.

Penny gives him that fond look he's gotten used to, one he wishes he could see more often. "You're such a dork. Tell me? C'mon, we're friends aren't we?"

Billy sags, placing the frozen yogurt carefully on the top of the tub. Their meetings have gone from twice a week to almost daily. It's kind of awesome but also really scary.

Plus he's running out of clothes to wash. Today, he had to steal some of Moist's sweaters. Luckily his damp friend gets through a lot of clothes.

"Billy?" Penny says, because he's zoned out on her.

"Er, sorry. I know. I mean, no. I don't like him very much. It's just-"

Penny nods, encouraging him to go on.

"It's the way he treats you, Pen," He loves that she lets him use her pet name. It makes him feel closer to her. Captain Hammer calls her Penelope and he knows she hates it. Douche. "You're… you're an incredible person. You deserve someone who respects you, who has the smarts to understand what you're doing and why. I d-don't think he does."

Penny doesn't protest, but she looks kind of sad and it makes him feel guilty. "Billy," she says.

"Yeah?"

"Do you want to help me out at the shelter? You know, help get things ready for the opening?"

He can't help but grin enthusiastically. "Sure!" Spend more time with her? Hell yeah!

"Only, we could really use every hand we can get-"

"Dude, I already said yes!" He says, and they both laugh.

He's never felt closer to her.

*--*--*

**Caring hands**

The way he suddenly drops off the radar causes a stir in the LA underworld. He gets three separate singing telegrams from Bad Horse. The Pink Pummeller and The Purple Pimp both flood him with worried emails.

Moist tells him that he's giving him the nervous sweats. But what's new?

No one can understand why Billy's suddenly lost his taste for evil.

But the answer is so clear to him. Penny, and the homeless shelter, becomes the centre of his life. Through her, he takes an interest in her crusade. He still doesn't exactly agree with her methods but her heart is in the right place. He talks to some of the volunteers, all of whom have been homeless themselves at some time or another. As good causes go, it's certainly one he can stand behind.

Captain Hammer occasionally drops by, sits around looking bored, then hurriedly leaves again. It's almost insultingly easy to avoid the guy.

The work itself is boring enough to allow his brain plenty of time to think and to invent. He makes himself useful fixing the electrics and rigging them up with cable TV. An illegal feed of course, old habits die hard, but Penny is so grateful that she kisses him on the cheek.

He doesn't wash his face for two days.

It's so, so hard not to just want to try and eliminate Captain Hammer himself and hell to Hourglass and D'Hoffryn and everyone. But Billy knows to his cost that Hammer is virtually indestructible. Brute force isn't going to cut it.

But he worries about Penny. Although she seems pathetically grateful to Hammer for everything he's doing, and she's still dating the stupid lunk, she doesn't actually seem to like him very much.

"He's just a little self-centred," Penny says, in one of the rare occasions that she lets herself complain about her boyfriend. "I'm not sure if he's doing all this for me or for the publicity."

Billy nods. "Well yeah-"

"But that's stupid, isn't it?" Penny interrupts him. "He loves me, I know he does. It's just…" A shadow passes over her expression and she rubs her wrist, where there's a yellowing bruise. "Sometimes he doesn't know his own strength."

Billy has to get up and leave. He has to go for a long walk around the neighbourhood.

He kicks a dumpster and cusses the air blue.

Hourglass's words haunt him "Captain Hammer would have destroyed himself. All you had to do was wait."

He just wishes he didn't have to wait so damn long.

*--*--*

**Slipping**

There are so many, many times, when he almost cracks. What's the point in having a Ph. D in Horribleness when you can't use your wickedly inventive brain in some way to foil Hammer and his stupid smug face.

It's a battle of wills - it's Billy versus his Dr Horrible persona, which he's used as a crutch for so many years. He goes home at night and he schemes and he plots and he finds new uses for the combination of dark magicks and tech, similar to his death ray technology but not exactly the same.

It couldn't be the same, because this time he doesn't have D'Hoffryn helping him.

And anyway, isn't he supposed to be swearing off this kind of thing? The whiteboard leads to evil science which leads to Penny dying in agony while her lungs fill up with blood.

Then why not try and protect Penny? Maybe that's where he's been going wrong? Protect Penny first, then kill Hammer…

He shakes himself, strips off his gloves, yanks his goggles from his forehead and collapses into his outsized sofa chair. His hands actually tremble from fatigue and excitement. He's just so torn…

Then his iPhone buzzes on the table, beside the photograph of Penny, taken on that beautiful day when he watched her from afar, before he'd even found out her name.

His phone buzzes again, and when he picks it up he sees it's actually a message from her. From Penny.

_"Captain Hammer stood me up. He's out foiling some crime in Brentwood. Want to go for something to eat?"_

Billy's heart skips a beat as he reads the message and his stomach lurches. But he wastes no time in stripping off his lab coat and pulling on a hoodie. Dinner with Penny!

Dinner? With Penny?

Just Penny and him, alone?

At last!


	3. Chapter 3

**Act 6**

**My Eyes**

"Damn it," Penny says angrily. He's never seen her so furious. "Damn that Dr Horrible. Why couldn't he rob a bank on any other night? Like one when I don't have my weekly date with my so-called boyfriend."

There's an overload of information in twhat she's saying and it takes Billy a moment to process it. She's obviously pissed, but her words are strangely contradictory. Is everything not going so well with Captain tool? But weirdly, what he actually says, because his brain has never been good at talking to women, is "Dr Horrible? It isn't Dr Horrible!"

"What?" Penny asks him, surprised that's all he's got to say.

"I mean, yeah, totally," Billy backtracks, picking up a menu and almost hitting her in the face with it. "I mean, that's annoying."

"Do you know something about this, Billy?" She asks him, suspiciously. His stomach drops for a moment, but then she says, "Have you seen something on the news?"

He shakes his head, relieved. For a minute there, he thought she might have wondered how he seemed to know so much about Dr Horrible. "No… I mean, yes. I mean. No. Not the news." What is he saying?

But would it really be so bad? If she knew? Really?

"Billy, what's wrong?" Penny gives him a funny look and he takes a deep breath.

"Penny, can I tell you a- a secret?"

Her frown deepens. "I guess. I mean, just so long as it's not weird or anything."

He gulps. He doesn't appreciate being made fun of. Not when he's trying to tell her the biggest thing about his private life. She seems to see that in his eyes and she smiles apologetically. "I'm sorry Billy. Of course you can. I was just being… silly. You can tell me anything."

For a moment he doesn't say anything, he just watches her face, wondering what she'd think if she knew everything. He wonders how fast she'd run. But the effort of keeping everything in for two weeks is killing him, and he blurts. "The reason I know that Dr Horrible isn't out robbing banks is because Dr Horrible is here with you tonight. I'm Dr Horrible."

Penny just stares at him. Then she begins to laugh.

He doesn't. "It's true, Pen. I'm Dr Horrible. At least, I was. I've kind of retired."

Penny shakes her head. "But that's ridiculous. You can't be Dr Horrible! You don't look anything like him. I've met him and he's… villainous! And evil! And you're-" She trails off.

"I'm Dr Horrible, Pen. I swear. That day, when we met in the alley, I couldn't talk to you because I was doing a heist. Then Hammer came along and smashed up the remote control on top of the van and it almost killed you." The words stick in his throat and the truth hits him like ice water. The first time he talked to Penny, he was carrying out an evil scheme and Captain Hammer interfered and almost killed her.

Why in the hell hadn't he learned his lesson?

So, okay, _now_ he has! But hello, mystical time-travelling involved!

"You're Dr Horrible?" Penny says, a look of horror on her face.

"Retired!" He insists helplessly.

"Oh my god," She gets to her feet, unsteady in the ridiculously high-heeled shoes she'd worn for her date with Hammer. "I'm sorry, I can't-" She tries to leave then, but trips and sprawls on to the floor. He springs up instantly from his seat to help her up, trying to simultaneously shoo the restaurant staff away.

"Well this isn't embarrassing at all," Penny says sarcastically, red-faced and close to tears.

"I'm sorry," Billy mumbles. "I just had to tell you the truth. I won't hurt you. I promise. I don't do that. You don't have to be afraid of me."

She dabs her eyes with a napkin. "Okay." She says, shakily. "The truth I can handle. But I think I'd better hear the whole thing. Let's start with why you became a super villain?"

He nods, squirming inside, because he's never articulated this stuff to a real person before, only to a webcam. "Well, I guess it started when I was a kid, at school."

The funny thing is, the more he talks, the easier it gets.

*--*--*

**Everyone's a hero**

On the day of the opening of the homeless shelter, Billy's up at six o'clock to meet Penny and the other volunteers at the building. They're all exhausted but excited about the day to come. Billy dresses in jeans and a t-shirt. There will be no white coat and goggles today.

Penny confides in him, telling him that she's intending to break things off with Captain Hammer today, but she doubts he'll even notice. She even apologises, although Billy's not quite sure what she's apologising for. Maybe for falling for the jerk in the first place? For being too blinded by hero-worship and his shiny hair to notice the bottom, even deeper layer of the guy which was 100% pure idiot?

Or maybe she was apologising for not talking to him the day after he'd confessed that he was Dr Horrible? For needing space to come to terms with it? That had been the longest twenty-four hours of Billy's life.

Maybe she was just apologising for using and abusing his wicked science chops for the past two weeks.

He doesn't really care, because she takes his hand and squeezed it.  
Actual, physical contact. Moist will be proud of him. And probably jealous.

Of course, at lunchtime, when the main hall starts to fill up, Billy sits at the back. hoodie pulled up to hide his face, and he tries to look inconspicuous while at the same time showing his presence to support Penny.

God, he loves her more and more each day. He loves her bright intelligence and her passion and her kooky dress sense and her amazing hair and her eyes and her smile and her kindness.

So to just sit there and watch Captain Hammer talk so mean about her, telling everyone how he'd had sex with her, it just makes him crazy. He wants to leap up and strangle the man with his bare hands.

But then he sees Penny, sees the way that she calmly and without fuss simply gets up and walks off the stage, leaving Hammer to posture and monologue, and say the most insulting, ignorant things.

Penny grabs his hand as she walks by and pulls him up out of his seat, through the main doors and out on to the street. Looking up at him, she gives him a shy smile.

"Thank you, Billy buddy," she says, and pulls him down into a soft, gentle kiss.

His mind goes kind of screwy for a minute, because she tastes like blackcurrant and milk duds and she's gorgeous and everything he ever-

Behind them, as Penny pulls away, there's a commotion in the street, and screaming. Instinctively, Billy pulls her close and they whirl around.

There's a terrible, horrible sound.

The sound of a horse, whinnying.

*--*--*

**Bad Horse Chorus**

This must be what it's like to be normal.

In the aftermath, that's all Billy thinks. This is what normal people feel.

Somehow, out of the chaos and running and terror, Captain Hammer appears and shoves him and Penny out of the way. They both land painfully on the concrete sidewalk and in that position, it's a little hard to see what's going on. But as far as Billy can tell, Hammer goes for Bad Horse, fists first, and Bad Horse fights back, sharp hooves flying.

The death whinny echoes across the street and Penny cowers, trembling in his arms.

The fight goes on and on - an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object - and eventually Bad Horse is beaten back. But it's not without a price.

When the animal lies senseless, on its side in the middle of the sidewalk and the police are left to try and work out how to cuff it, Hammer crawls away, groaning in pain. He spots Penny on the asphalt and limps over to her, trying to grab her hand.

"Hey!" Billy says, pushing him back violently. He doesn't even think about the consequences.

But Hammer stumbles back under the force of the blow. "Penny?" The big man says. "I saved you. I saved all of you!"

And Billy couldn't be more proud when Penny replied. "I know, sweetie. Thank you. But I think Billy should take me home." Billy drapes an arm around her and they turn to walk away. His heart soars because, even now, he can't believe that she's chosing him over Captain Hammer.

"Billy?" The Captain says, incredulously. "But you know he's-"

Penny looks back over her shoulder. "I know who he was," she says, smiling at Billy. "But he's retired. And I think Bad Horse was after _him_, actually. So thanks for saving my boyfriend too."

Boyfriend? Did Penny just call him her boyfriend? Billy can't stop grinning as they leave Captain Hammer, impotently fuming on the sidewalk behind them, and catch just one single explosive word before they are out of earshot.

"Balls!"

*--*--*

**So they say**

Captain Hammer sits in a bar, drowning his sorrows. Except, he's not exactly Captain Hammer any more. No, he's just plain old Ricky Holland now, a pathetic shell of a man. After winning the most epic fight with the most despicable of super villains, it seemed nobody wanted to deal with a broken down ex-hero who's super strength has been drained from him.

And it was all Dr Horrible's fault.

Dr Horrible, who's seduced his Penny, who's set him up against Bad Horse and stolen his power.

Dr Horrible, the most evil man alive.

Dr Horrible had to pay!

Hammer's cheek twitches as he wishes, with all his heart and soul, that Dr Horrible could feel just what he feels right now.

Suddenly, the seat next to him is occupied by a tall, ugly-looking dude wearing some kind of Halloween costume. Which makes little or no sense in July.

"Don't you just wish that some people could get what's coming to them?" The weird-looking guy says. "You know what they say, what goes around, comes around."

He's got horns, and weird skin, and a big, long dress. Maybe he's an extra in a movie or something?

"Hell yeah," Hammer mumbles into his drink. "All I want right now is for _him_ to feel how I feel." Hammer blames his stupid shrink, because what does that man know? How does it really help him by talking about how he feels all the time? It doesn't solve anything! All he wants to do is get Horrible in his sights and whale on him. Make him feel real pain. "Know what I mean?" He slurs.

The weird-looking guy turns around in his seat and smiles, showing a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. "Oh, believe me my friend, I do. Now tell me what you'd wish to do to him if your _nemesis_ were here right now?"

Captain Hammer thinks that he looks kind of demonic.


End file.
